Lsi Corporation

Lsi Logic Corporation

Avvasi Inc.

Netscout Systems Texas, LLC

Cisco Systems Canada Co.

Michael D Gallant

Eric C Pearson

Lowell Leroy Winger

Anthony Peter Joch

Guy Cote

Pavel Novotny

Roman Kordasiewicz

Michael Archer

Harminder S Banwait

Kevin Goertz

Roxsan Payette

Simon Booth

David Cameron Dolson

Mark Korhonen

Mate Prgin

Dan Eble

A system includes a policy repository configured to store a plurality of plurality of media-centric policies. A media policy decision point receives media session data corresponding to one of the plurality of media sessions; determines a plurality of media-specific and non-media specific attributes, based on the media session data; and evaluates a plurality of media-centric policies to determine a proper subset of the plurality of media-centric policies that apply to the one of the plurality of media sessions. A media policy enforcement point enforces the proper subset of the plurality of media-centric policies to control the one of the plurality of media sessions.

Systems for media policy decision and control and methods for use therewith

A system includes a policy repository configured to store a plurality of media-centric policies. A media policy decision point is configured to execute operational instructions in accordance with a media centric policy language to select at least one of the plurality of policies corresponding to one of the plurality of media sessions based on, for example, feedback extracted monitoring the plurality of media sessions. The media-centric policy language, in various embodiments, expresses at least one of: operator preferences, operator goals, or operator constraints, facilitates management of individual ones of the plurality of media sessions and/or facilitates management of aggregate media traffic over the plurality of media sessions.

Systems and languages for media policy decision and control and methods for use therewith

Systems, methods and apparatus are provided for computing quality scores for a media session delivered using an adaptive streaming protocol, where the quality score may be an estimate of a mean opinion score. The quality score reflects the impact of network delivery on a viewer's quality of experience (QoE). In particular, the quality score is generally based on the effects of stream switch events, as stream switches may be the result of impaired network delivery. Other network events, such as re-buffering events may also be incorporated in the score.

Methods and apparatus for providing a media stream quality signal

An apparatus generally having an interface and a circuit is disclosed. The interface may be connectable to a network to monitor a media program streaming across the network to a media client. The circuit may be configured to (i) generate first information by modeling a buffer of the media client, the first information being representative of a plurality of events related to the buffer during a playback of the media program and (ii) generate a signal representative of a quality of experience of the media program in response to the first information.

Delivery quality of experience (QoE) in a computer network

Systems and methods of controlling access to a multimedia stream in a media streaming session from a multimedia server to a requesting device via a network. The systems and methods facilitate receiving a primary request for the multimedia stream from the requesting device; determining whether to allow access to the primary request from the requesting device in accordance with at least one media session policy; and if access is permitted, then generating a secondary request corresponding to the primary request; providing the secondary request to the multimedia server; receiving a first multimedia stream from the multimedia server in response to the secondary request; determining whether to transmit the first multimedia stream or a second multimedia stream based on the at least one media session policy; and transmitting either the first multimedia stream or the second multimedia stream to the requesting device as indicated by the at least one media session policy.

Systems and methods for controlling access to a media stream

Methods and systems for transcoding from an input media stream to an output media stream, wherein the input media stream and the output media stream are in an indexed file format. The methods and systems are capable of generating an efficiently coded media file where the movie box is generated and sent before transcoding is complete, while maintaining acceptable and consistent quality throughout and minimizing the total size of the file.

Systems and methods for dynamic transcoding of indexed media file formats

Apparatus, methods and systems using no-reference techniques for computing quality scores for audio and video components of a media session, where the quality scores are estimates of perceived quality by the viewer for the individual components of the media session. A presentation quality score is computed for a media stream by parsing a container of the media stream to determine media stream characteristics, estimating an visual quality factor and based on the visual quality factor, determining the presentation quality score.

Methods and apparatus for providing a presentation quality signal

A monitoring system includes a video network analyzer processes the packet data to generate network and media session data relating to the distribution of video content via the data distribution network in at least one media session, wherein the network and media session data includes at least one session metric, location data, protocol identification data, video encoding parameter data, and audio encoding parameter data. An analytics database stores the network and media session data for generation of report data.

System for monitoring a video network and methods for use therewith

A method for transcoding that includes (A) generating a decoded frame by decoding an MPEG-2 input video stream, the decoded frame including decoded macroblocks; (B) determining a search center for encoding a current macroblock corresponding to a pair of the decoded macroblocks on consecutive macroblock rows, when (i) the encoding uses a predictive field mode and (ii) a current field being encoded is a second field of a current frame that has a first field as a reference field, the search center is a temporally scaled version of a decoded motion vector from an upper or a lower macroblock in the pair; (C) generating a refined motion vector by searching in a temporal search direction about the search center; and (D) generating an H.264 output video stream by encoding the current macroblock based on the refined motion vector.

Motion vector refinement for MPEG-2 to H.264 video transcoding

A method of motion estimation (ME) refinement. The method generally includes the steps of (A) generating an initial motion vector (MV) by conducting a first ME on an initial block in a picture, the initial block covering an initial area of the picture, (B) generating a current MV by conducting a second ME on a current block in the picture, (i) the current block covering a subset of the initial area and (ii) the second ME being seeded by the initial MV, (C) generating at least one additional MV by conducting at least one third ME on the current block, the at least one third ME being seeded respectively by at least one neighboring MV spatially adjacent to the current MV and (D) generating a refined MV of the current block by storing in a memory a best among the current MV and the additional MV.

Refinement of motion vectors in hierarchical motion estimation

A method for transcoding is disclosed. The method generally includes the steps of (A) generating a decoded frame by decoding an input video stream in an MPEG-2 format, the decoded frame including a plurality of decoded macroblocks; (B) determining a current search center to be used in encoding a current macroblock into an H.264 format, the current macroblock corresponding to a pair of the decoded macroblocks on consecutive macroblock rows, wherein when (i) the encoding uses a predictive field mode and (ii) a current field being encoded comprises a second field of a current frame and has a first field of the current frame as a reference field, the current search center comprises a temporally scaled version of a decoded motion vector from one of an upper macroblock of the pair and a lower macroblock in the pair; (C) generating a refined motion vector by searching in a temporal search direction about the current search center; and (D) generating an output video stream in the H.264 format by the encoding of the current macroblock based on the refined motion vector.

A method for implementing B-frame prediction in video compression comprising the steps of (A) setting a prediction flag (i) 'off' if B-frames are used for block prediction and (ii) 'on' if B-frames are not used for block prediction, (B) if the prediction flag is off, generating an output video signal in response to an input video signal by performing an inverse quantization step and an inverse transform step in accordance with a predefined coding specification and (C) if the prediction flag is on, bypassing the inverse quantization step and the inverse transform step.

Method and/or apparatus for reducing the complexity of H.264 B-frame encoding using selective reconstruction

An apparatus generally having a first circuit and a second circuit is disclosed. The first circuit may be configured to (i) copy a plurality of first reference samples of a first reference image from an external memory, the first reference samples being proximate a first position within the first reference image and (ii) generate a first motion vector corresponding to a first current block of a current image by searching among the first reference samples. The second circuit may be configured to (i) copy a plurality of second reference samples of the first reference image from the external memory, the second reference samples being (a) proximate a second position within the first reference image and (b) non-adjacent the first reference samples and (ii) generate a second motion vector corresponding to the first current block by searching among the second reference samples.

High quality, low memory bandwidth motion estimation processor

An apparatus generally having a reference memory and a motion estimation circuit is disclosed. The reference memory may store reference samples used in a motion estimation of a current block beyond a boundary of a picture. The motion estimation circuit may (i) buffer the reference samples as copied from the reference memory, the reference samples as buffered residing both (a) inside the boundary and (b) inside a search window of the motion estimation, (ii) shift a sub-set of the reference samples to align with a corner of a sub-window, the sub-window being (a) completely within the search window and (b) at least partially outside of the boundary, (iii) fill an empty portion of the sub-window with copies of the reference samples within the sub-set and (iv) generate difference values by comparing the current block against the reference samples within the sub-window a plurality of times.

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Guelph, Canada

Michael D Gallant